Support for Nuke Dump Withdrawn

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Support for Nuke Dump Withdrawn

LAS VEGAS – A former Department of Energy official who drafted a proposal to make Nevada's Yucca Mountain a nuclear waste disposal site is withdrawing his support for the project.

W. Kenneth Davis, undersecretary from 1981 to 1983 during the Reagan administration, sent an unsolicited letter to the White House saying that the site won't be approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

"In my opinion, (it) should be put in mothballs," Davis wrote in a three-page memorandum. Last week, President Bush called for a national nuclear waste repository as part of his energy plan.

Since 1987, Yucca Mountain has been the only site studied to become the graveyard for the nation's 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive research waste.

But Davis said that Yucca Mountain can't overcome Nevada's strong opposition to transporting and storing the waste 1,000 feet beneath a wind-swept ridge, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"At Yucca Mountain, you are going to run into a hailstorm of protest over shipping," he said in Wednesday's editions of the Las Vegas Sun.

Gov. Kenny Guinn, all four members of Nevada's bipartisan congressional delegation and Las Vegas business and casino interests oppose the Yucca Mountain plan. The state Legislature is considering allocating $4 million for a public relations campaign and legal fight.

Davis cited the potential for water and radiation to escape Yucca Mountain and said burying nuclear wastes in a permanent repository was never intended when he authored the policy.